Political scientist and media critic

October 23, 2017

New NYT: Facebook's fact-checking should be checked

Since the 2016 presidential campaign, Facebook has taken a number of actions to prevent the continued distribution of false news articles on its platform, most notably by labeling articles rated as false or misleading by fact checkers as “disputed.”

But how effective are these measures?

To date, Facebook has offered little information to the public other than a recent email to fact checkers asserting that labeled articles receive 80 percent fewer impressions. But more data is necessary to determine the success of these efforts. Research (including my own) suggests the need to carefully evaluate the effectiveness of Facebook’s interventions.